16 Shades of Grey: The greatest Grey Cup of all time is …

16 Shades of Grey: The greatest Grey Cup of all time is ...

To celebrate the 100th Grey Cup on Nov. 25, we are hosting 16 Shades of Grey, a bracket-style tournament to decide the most memorable Grey Cup game of all time. Our team of National Post sports writers and editors narrowed the first 99 Grey Cups down to a sweet 16, and debated their favourites. You voted for the winners.

1989: The Classic
Saskatchewan 43 Hamilton 40
You have to remember that this was back before Saskatchewan’s economy boomed, back before the Roughriders started selling more T-shirts and memorabilia than the rest of the CFL combined. In 1989, the economy was in bad shape, and its football team was a long-suffering source of anxiety.

Saskatchewan had not won a Grey Cup since 1966 the day the Roughriders arrived inside SkyDome to face the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. And here they all were, suddenly, on national television, in a positive light. The fans, the hearty ones who lived by the Prairie creed — tough times don’t last, but tough people do — were being rewarded.

Dave Ridgway turned that reward into a winning lottery ticket.

After he hit that 35-yard field goal to seal the 43-40 win, they flooded into the streets in Regina. There were reports of traffic backed up for kilometres in every direction as fans congregated downtown. It was a football victory, sure, but it was more than that — it was a triumph for the entire province.

“When you make your living on the whims of the weather, your football team is one of the few things that you have to root for, and those fans have stuck with us,” Ridgway told a reporter that night. “I think of all the little towns in Saskatchewan that I’ve done speaking engagements in. Those people bleed green. They really do. I hope they’re having a beer tonight.”- Sean Fitz-Gerald

RUNNER UP:2009: The 13th Man
Montreal 28 Saskatchewan 27
The 13th Man may not be the standard definition of a great moment, but it showed Saskatchewan’s true character. No one ever revealed who the 13th Man was, and all of the players took the blame. Even other Grey Cup teams in the years since learned from the Riders’ mistake.

“Any time we’re in a situation where we’re substituting, I will say: ‘OK, when this happens, you are taking him physically out, and you don’t go on the field until it happens,” former Riders offensive co-ordinator Paul LaPolice told Vancouver Sun columnist Cam Cole last Grey Cup when he was the Bombers coach. “And they all go, ‘Yeah, coach, 2009. Yup, oh-nine, we got it.’”